Tech:NYC Digest: October 27
Tuesday, October 27, 2026
In today’s digest, a busy New York weekend, new greenways in the outer boroughs, and NYC adtech and martech companies to watch. 👀
Costumes and running shoes and ballots (and an extra hour of sleep) — oh my! NYC has a jam-packed weekend ahead with Halloween, the NYC Marathon, the final weekend of early voting, and the end of daylight saving time are all converging. 🎃 (Gothamist)
Saturday’s Village Halloween Parade kicks off at 7pm on Sixth Avenue, while Sunday’s marathon will bring 50,000 runners and plenty of road closures across all five boroughs.
The silver lining? Clocks fall back an hour at 2am Sunday, giving Halloween revelers an extra hour to party and marathon runners an extra hour to rest.
NYC is paving the way for 44 miles of new greenways across the outer boroughs. The city has kicked off planning for four new walking and biking corridors connecting neighborhoods, parks, transit hubs, and job centers. 🚴 (NYC DOT)
The proposed routes span 15 miles along the Bronx waterfront, 12 through Brooklyn, 10 along Staten Island’s North Shore, and seven in southern Queens, including improved access to JFK Airport.
First up: Public workshops for the Bronx route begin November 4, with planning for all six of the city’s proposed greenways expected to wrap by 2028.
Queens buses are finally picking up speed. A year after the MTA overhauled the borough’s bus network, local buses are moving 1.7% faster on weekdays, with some redesigned routes delivering much bigger time savings. 🚌 (amNY)
Newly created “rush routes” have been the biggest winners. These buses serve neighborhoods farther from the subway, which saw speeds jump 4.6% overall and 11% on express-like segments.
The redesign also gave 124,000 more Queens residents access to buses arriving every 10 minutes between 6am and 9pm, while another 68,000 gained 24-hour service.
In other reading:
Inside the hidden finances of the New York City Marathon (Huddle Up)
More than 120 years ago today, NYC opened its first underground train (Washington Post)
Three NYC snowfall predictions for winter 2026 (Patch)
Event Spotlight: Tech Summit
What will it take to turn New York’s AI growth into opportunity across the city?
On October 29, we’re teaming up with Crain’s New York Business for the Tech Summit, bringing together leaders across tech, government, venture capital, and nonprofits to explore what’s next for NYC’s tech economy.
Register here with promo code FRIENDSOFTECHNYC for 15% off.
Beyond Madison Avenue: NYC Adtech and Martech Companies to Watch
New York has been the capital of advertising and marketing since Madison Avenue became shorthand for the whole industry. Billboards, magazine spreads, TV spots, banner ads — if it was a new way to reach people, it probably got its start here. 🗽
Now add in the tech side of things. Across loyalty and community, retail purchase data, AI search, and AI-native ad formats, NYC startups are rethinking how brands find customers, and what customers get in return.
The category is in the middle of its biggest shift since the rise of online search.
U.S. digital ad revenue hit a record $294.6 billion in 2025, up 13.9% year over year, according to IAB and PwC.
Spending on AI search ads was just over $1 billion last year, and eMarketer projects it will reach nearly $26 billion by 2029.
Just this month, NYC held its annual Advertising Week, and our recent NYC AI Demos event featured NYC adtech companies.
Against this backdrop, we caught up with a group of NYC founders building the next generation of adtech and marketing tech, making advertising and marketing a little more useful to the people on the other side of the screen.
Here’s a preview of what they had to say, including why they decided to build in New York:
🛍️ Kait Stephens, founder, Brij, a platform that helps brands improve digital advertising and customer retention using shopper and purchase information:
“Building a startup takes a village, and New York is the best village you could ask for.”
👜 Sarah Ganzenmuller and Regan Jayne Plekenpol, co-founders, rediem, a platform that helps consumer brands build customer loyalty by rewarding engagement, referrals, and community participation:
“There’s nowhere more creatively demanding and the culture moves fast here. Trends surface in NYC before they surface online, and a community platform needs to be close to that.”
💰 Olalla Arcadia Levi, founder, WHYL, a platform that pays users to watch short ads while waiting for AI tools like ChatGPT to generate responses.
“We need both the companies creating AI experiences and the brands looking for new ways to reach people. New York brings those conversations close together.”
In other reading:
Wonder, Grubhub, and The Greg Hill Foundation’s Restaurant Strong Fund announce $1 million in grants for independent restaurants (Restaurant Strong Fund)
This is how marketers can win in the age of AI (Fast Company)
Takeaways from Anthropic’s IPO prospectus (Wall Street Journal)
Welcome to our weekly jobs section, where we spotlight a selection of the NYC tech jobs from Tech:NYC’s Jobs Board — all recently posted. 🔥
Today, we’re highlighting some software engineering roles that caught our attention recently.
Senior Software Engineer — Uber ($202k-$224k / year + equity): You’ll lead high-impact, full-stack projects to architect and build low-latency storefront and browsing experiences for Uber Eats' Grocery & Retail platform. You’ll also partner with cross-functional stakeholders to scale critical consumer-facing surfaces while mentoring team members on engineering best practices. Apply here.
Senior Software Engineer, Infrastructure, Google Ads — Google ($174k - $252k / year + equity): You’ll design, develop, test, and maintain large-scale distributed systems and infrastructure that power Google Ads’ multi-billion dollar global business. You’ll also lead technical design reviews, review peer code, and collaborate with teams like DeepMind and Google Research to solve complex problems at an unparalleled scale. Apply here.
Software Engineer, Backend, Level 3 — Snap ($100k-$176k / year + equity): You’ll design, implement, and operate highly scalable backend services and core infrastructure that power Snapchat for hundreds of millions of daily users. You’ll also collaborate across engineering teams to deliver high-quality, privacy-focused features while maintaining system availability, performance, and operational excellence. Apply here.
Hyphenate, an NYC-based provider of AI-powered finance automation software, raised $45 million in Series A funding. Nexus Venture Partners led the round and was joined by B Capital and existing investors Foundation Capital, BoldCap, and Gaia Ventures.
Pythag Tech, an NYC-based cultivated-meat startup, raised $4.3 million in seed funding. Azolla Ventures led the round, joined by Endurance28.
Nevis, an NYC-based provider of AI-powered workflow automation software for wealth management firms, raised $70 million in Series B funding. EQT Ventures led the round and was joined by Charles Schwab, QuantumLight, and existing investors Sequoia Capital, ICONIQ, and Ribbit Capital.
Featured events:
⭐ October 28: RSV Consumer Brand Summit 2026, Red Sea Ventures’ annual event bringing together the brightest founders, operators, industry leaders, and investors for an afternoon of deep discussion on latest ways brands can build and scale.
Speakers include Nic Jammet (co-founder, Sweetgreen), Siggi Hilmarsson (founder, Siggi’s), Ara Katz (co-founder, Seed Health), and many more. Register here.
⭐ October 29: Crain’s Tech Summit, bringing together leaders across tech, business, policy, academia, and workforce development to explore how New York is building the infrastructure, talent, and partnerships needed to lead in the AI economy. Register here with promo code FRIENDSOFTECHNYC for 15% off.
⭐ October 29: Business Insider’s The Long Play brings leaders together in NYC to discuss navigating economic cycles, adapting to new technology, and building lasting companies and careers. Speakers include Barry Diller, Zach Reitano, Strauss Zelnick, and Cristina Junqueira. Get your discounted pass here.
⭐ November 5: NYC AI Demos: Health Tech, the 12th edition of our monthly AI demo series with Pensar and Two Trees, this month featuring live technical demonstrations from Headway, Evvy, Norbert Health, and Cleo Health, with more companies to be announced. Register here.
⭐ December 9-10: The AI Summit New York, Javits Center. Now in its 11th year, this event is an established gathering of the global AI ecosystem. Join over 7,000 attendees using the code TECHNYC20 to claim 20% off Delegate or VIP All Access passes. Register here.
Other great events:
October 28: Founder Pop-up and Coworking Session Hosted by Speedrun. The a16z Speedrun team are holding an event for New York founders ahead of their applications deadline this Sunday. If you’re building (or thinking about it), swing by and ask questions before applications close. Register here.
October 28: Crafting Cap Tables, a morning built for early-stage and first-raise founders to learn what angels and VCs are actually looking for, before you send that email or step into the meeting room. Register here.
October 29: Is Everything Predictable?: AI, Prediction Markets, and the Philosophy of Foresight, a six-week course exploring works from philosophy, cultural studies, and journalism to understand how technologies that predict the future also shape the present. Register here.
October 30: Your Investor Pitch: What to Say and How to Say It, a free, two-hour workshop for founders who want to build a stronger investor pitch and deliver it with confidence. Register here.
October 31: Founders Running Club, bringing together founders, builders, investors, and operators for easy runs and networking. Register here.
November 2: Powering the Transition: Closing the Skills Gap in New Energy Infrastructure, an interactive working session uniting talent leaders, employers, and training providers to bridge critical skilled-trade gaps and align workforce development with the demands of new energy infrastructure. Register here.
November 2: Can Your Agents Actually Ship?, exploring the data foundations agents need to trust and the SDLC they need to ship through. Register here.
November 2-4: AI DevCon NYC, a three-day gathering bringing together AI developers, engineering leaders and founders to explore the future of AI-native software development. Register here for 30% off for Tech:NYC Digest readers.
November 4: Art Cafe: Women Founders & Leaders, connecting established and rising women leaders, founders, and c-suite executives in NYC. Register here.
November 4: The Serica Initiative’s 2026 AAPI Trailblazers Conference, bringing together leaders across technology, business, academia, media, arts, education and the nonprofit sector for an afternoon of provocative conversation, practical learning and meaningful connection. Register here.
November 4: The Growth Council: Off-the-Record Problem Solving for Scaling Founders, a small-group, peer-to-peer advisory session built specifically for Seed to Series B founders who want to explore their challenges with experts from across the industry and outside their network. Register here.
November 9: Climate Scaling Summit, focused on how climate startups break into government as a customer, regulator, and partner. Register here.
November 10: No Secrets, Just Drinks: Defakto PM Happy Hour, an evening of drinks and light bites in midtown to meet other PMs and trade notes on the future of product, AI, and security. Register here.
November 12: Her Tech Mastermind Circles, where each woman in attendance gets dedicated time to share a challenge she’s facing in her career, leadership, or personal growth, and receive thoughtful, actionable feedback from peers who truly get it. Register here.
November 16-17: Prompt: New York, two days of 1-on-1 meetings between AI founders and top VCs, 10 minutes each, all online. Register here.
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